4 ms·

Anonymity is not really a feature of Bitcoin, and in fact the design of Bitcoin makes anonymity difficult.

by betterunix 13y ago

sillysaurus2 13y ago
People keep saying this, but it's just not true. Use a tumbler. Done.
- betterunix 13y ago
  No, not done: (1) You need to hope and pray that your mixing service does not just run off with your money (2) You need to be careful not to withdraw your money from the mixing service "too quickly" or else you will de-anonymize yourself Here is a paper that casts serious doubt on at least one mixing service, based on a simple (by the authors' own admission) approach to de-anonymizing Bitcoin: https://www.wi.uni-muenster.de/sites/default/files/public/department/itsecurity/mbc13/mbc13-moeser-paper.pdf https://www.wi.uni-muenster.de/sites/default/files/public/de... All this ignores the fact that the security model of Bitcoin mixing services is even less well-developed than the security model of Bitcoin itself (incredibly, such things are possible).
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    Thank you for the paper. But did you read it? Bitcoin Fog works, and the paper goes into detail about why it works. In the Silk Road investigation, the investigators basically threw up their hands and said "don't bother trying to analyze the transaction graph." So there's some evidence that tumblers are effective in practice.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      I do not think the takeaway is that Bitcoin Fog works; rather, it is that Bitcoin Fog protects you from the specific strategy used by the authors of the paper. Another approach might work against Bitcoin Fog. "In the Silk Road investigation, the investigators basically threw up their hands and said "don't bother trying to analyze the transaction graph." So apparently tumblers are effective in practice." Do you have a citation about mixing services specifically thwarting investigators? Maybe the investigators felt that Bitcoin itself was too much to deal with. It would not be the first time a law enforcement agency has pointed to a system with little-to-no security and claimed that they cannot attack it.
      - sillysaurus2 13y ago
        Do you have an email I could reach you at?
        betterunix 13y ago
        Sure, but is there a less public way for me to give it to you?
        sillysaurus2 13y ago
        You can email me... I'll just delete this comment after you do. My email is sillysaurus2 at gmail.
GauntletWizard 13y ago
No, but pseudonymity, with no appreciable tie to a 'real name', is, and therefore if you can pay for your business expenses with Bitcoin and find some way of extracting the value without providing a name (i.e. buying commodities to dead-drops, via silk road, etc), you can run a corporation entirely pseudonymously.
jafaku 13y ago
You are not attaching any form of ID to the transactions. Bitcoin is anonymous. The fact that the NSA can track you down by various means is a whole different thing. And by that logic nothing in the Universe is anonymous, since it's deterministic and it doesn't lose information, so theoretically everything could be traced back to its origin.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "You are not attaching any form of ID to the transactions. Bitcoin is anonymous." That is kind of like saying, "StackOverflow is anonymous. You do not attach any form of ID to your questions!" Of course, that worked out pretty badly for a certain high-profile Bitcoin user recently (yes, he leaked his real name at one point; however, he had also used his pseudonym in many other places, which was part of the problem): https://medium.com/p/d48995e8eb5a https://medium.com/p/d48995e8eb5a "by that logic nothing in the Universe is anonymous, since it's deterministic" Hardly, in fact, all the evidence points to a probabilistic universe; by extension, probabilistic approaches to anonymity might be possible. It just so happens that in the context of electronic payments, that is entirely possible, and for more than 25 years cryptographers have been studying such things (and there is a pile of published research). Yes, you can even have an electronic payments system that protects your privacy from the NSA.
  - jafaku 13y ago
    > yes, he leaked his real name at one point So either he attached his ID, or he was traced by other means. Stackoverflow can be anonymous. It doesn't require an ID verification. But you can put your real name if you want to, nothing is stopping you. And again, by your logic you won't be able to give me an example of something that is anonymous: Whatever you say, I will say that the NSA planted a cam in your home. BOOM! Not anonymous anymore. > Hardly, in fact, all the evidence points to a probabilistic universe Not a physicist, but AFAIK that's the old interpretation of quantum mechanics, disproved by some cheap but crazy experiments.
- tree_of_item 13y ago
  >And by that logic nothing in the Universe is anonymous, since it's deterministic and it doesn't lose information, so theoretically everything could be traced back to its origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_process If a process is irreversible it means information was lost. And from the article, "All complex natural processes are irreversible".

Anonymity is not really a feature of Bitcoin, and in fact the design of Bitcoin makes anonymity difficult.

sillysaurus2 13y ago

People keep saying this, but it's just not true. Use a tumbler. Done.

betterunix 13y ago
No, not done: (1) You need to hope and pray that your mixing service does not just run off with your money (2) You need to be careful not to withdraw your money from the mixing service "too quickly" or else you will de-anonymize yourself Here is a paper that casts serious doubt on at least one mixing service, based on a simple (by the authors' own admission) approach to de-anonymizing Bitcoin: https://www.wi.uni-muenster.de/sites/default/files/public/department/itsecurity/mbc13/mbc13-moeser-paper.pdf https://www.wi.uni-muenster.de/sites/default/files/public/de... All this ignores the fact that the security model of Bitcoin mixing services is even less well-developed than the security model of Bitcoin itself (incredibly, such things are possible).
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  Thank you for the paper. But did you read it? Bitcoin Fog works, and the paper goes into detail about why it works. In the Silk Road investigation, the investigators basically threw up their hands and said "don't bother trying to analyze the transaction graph." So there's some evidence that tumblers are effective in practice.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    I do not think the takeaway is that Bitcoin Fog works; rather, it is that Bitcoin Fog protects you from the specific strategy used by the authors of the paper. Another approach might work against Bitcoin Fog. "In the Silk Road investigation, the investigators basically threw up their hands and said "don't bother trying to analyze the transaction graph." So apparently tumblers are effective in practice." Do you have a citation about mixing services specifically thwarting investigators? Maybe the investigators felt that Bitcoin itself was too much to deal with. It would not be the first time a law enforcement agency has pointed to a system with little-to-no security and claimed that they cannot attack it.
    - sillysaurus2 13y ago
      Do you have an email I could reach you at?
      - betterunix 13y ago
        Sure, but is there a less public way for me to give it to you?
        sillysaurus2 13y ago
        You can email me... I'll just delete this comment after you do. My email is sillysaurus2 at gmail.

GauntletWizard 13y ago

No, but pseudonymity, with no appreciable tie to a 'real name', is, and therefore if you can pay for your business expenses with Bitcoin and find some way of extracting the value without providing a name (i.e. buying commodities to dead-drops, via silk road, etc), you can run a corporation entirely pseudonymously.

jafaku 13y ago

You are not attaching any form of ID to the transactions. Bitcoin is anonymous. The fact that the NSA can track you down by various means is a whole different thing. And by that logic nothing in the Universe is anonymous, since it's deterministic and it doesn't lose information, so theoretically everything could be traced back to its origin.

betterunix 13y ago
"You are not attaching any form of ID to the transactions. Bitcoin is anonymous." That is kind of like saying, "StackOverflow is anonymous. You do not attach any form of ID to your questions!" Of course, that worked out pretty badly for a certain high-profile Bitcoin user recently (yes, he leaked his real name at one point; however, he had also used his pseudonym in many other places, which was part of the problem): https://medium.com/p/d48995e8eb5a https://medium.com/p/d48995e8eb5a "by that logic nothing in the Universe is anonymous, since it's deterministic" Hardly, in fact, all the evidence points to a probabilistic universe; by extension, probabilistic approaches to anonymity might be possible. It just so happens that in the context of electronic payments, that is entirely possible, and for more than 25 years cryptographers have been studying such things (and there is a pile of published research). Yes, you can even have an electronic payments system that protects your privacy from the NSA.
- jafaku 13y ago
  > yes, he leaked his real name at one point So either he attached his ID, or he was traced by other means. Stackoverflow can be anonymous. It doesn't require an ID verification. But you can put your real name if you want to, nothing is stopping you. And again, by your logic you won't be able to give me an example of something that is anonymous: Whatever you say, I will say that the NSA planted a cam in your home. BOOM! Not anonymous anymore. > Hardly, in fact, all the evidence points to a probabilistic universe Not a physicist, but AFAIK that's the old interpretation of quantum mechanics, disproved by some cheap but crazy experiments.
tree_of_item 13y ago
>And by that logic nothing in the Universe is anonymous, since it's deterministic and it doesn't lose information, so theoretically everything could be traced back to its origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_process If a process is irreversible it means information was lost. And from the article, "All complex natural processes are irreversible".